Thread: Victorian (Military?) Wade and Butcher with Queen Victoria's Cypher

That is odd. I would trust the people who do professional work via this site. But if it was someone else, it might be that you are being put off by someone who is set up to do only light honing, like a razor might need after a lot of normal use. This one, though it may have sharpened a pencil or settled a gang fight in its time, doesn't look irrecoverable.

The only purely metallurgical problem I can think of is having the hardness drawn in a house fire. This is quite comon with Japanese swords, due to their tradition of building houses of paper and firewood. It would be difficult to reharden it without distortion, although perhaps worth risking an eBay $22. Horn scales would show any such accident, but ebony mightn't.

Thank you for your kind remarks, although I am uncomfortably aware that the bulge in his pocket is very like his "ivory" celluloid safety razor box.

I have already seen this picture from the SRP archive, which is identical to the Wade & Butcher Superior Concave which I have just started restoring, except that mine came without scales. They date it (their specimen or model, and on what authority I don't know) at 1830-37. But I have only just noticed that it bears the same Victoria cypher as yours

Wade & Butcher "Full Concave Fine India Steel" 7/8 - Straight Razor Place Wiki

It is, moreover, marked "Admiralty approved" in the maker's inscription on the tang. Unlike guns, of course, there is no way these marks could be made, other than at a fairly early stage of manufacture. So we have two rather similar Wade and Butcher razors which seem to have a naval connection, and of which one (not the less technically sophisticated of the two) can be dated right at the beginning of the Victorian period.

The naval connection makes sense. Naval training at the time was not college-based, and boys of pre-shaving age often went to sea, whether as boys or on the officer track as midshipmen. Hormones could kick in on an extremely lengthy voyage, and for midshipmen, who led a brutally hard life, there was none of that modern nonsense about personal grooming being a matter of personal choice. It would make sense to have razors available, possibly for issue, but more likely for a ship's barber's use.

I'll have to get some pics of my Victorian W & B. It is a great shaver and came to me in outstanding shape. It is my favorite razor.

Fantastic info! I'm going to send mine off to Lynn and let him have a go at sharpening it before I give up.

Great find. I have one just like it.

Originally Posted by tumtatty

Fantastic info! I'm going to send mine off to Lynn and let him have a go at sharpening it before I give up.

That sounds like the right thing to do. Even if there is some problem that there is no way around, it is worth paying what can't be a fortune, to know for sure. Then you won't be looking at the thing forever, and wondering whether you are fooling yourself.

It's off in the mail! I'm hopeful Lynn can get her back in action. I'd hate to have just a "wall hanger" but I'll take what I can get ")